


I Don't Take Orders From You

by orphan_account



Category: Kong: Skull Island (2017)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-10-27 07:16:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: AU: Kong kills the biggest skull-crawler, but he's injured, and the battle takes place inland. The group still has a ways to go to get to the north side of the island in time. Also Packard survives, only knocked out during the battle at the flaming lake, but separated from the rest of the group, and has come up with a new way to try to kill Kong.  Surviving men who hadn't managed to make radio contact have been drawn to the fire at the lake, and after meeting up with Packard, cut Weaver and Conrad off from getting back to the boat and the rest of the group, which is a ways off further up the river.  Conrad just wants to get as many of them as possible off the island alive, but Packard has other ideas. And then there's this thing with Slivko, which is rapidly getting complicated.





	1. The Best Made Plans (Weaver)

**Author's Note:**

> I promise, Conrad and Slivko will interact more in the next chapter. Also pov shifts are going to be happening from chapter to chapter. Slivko's up next, which should be interesting.

“Packard, don’t.” Conrad’s tone was as straightforward as the rifle he’d leveled at Packard’s chest. This was a warning. “It’s over.”

Packard looked between Conrad and Mason, but there was no hesitation in his expression. “It’s not over. Are you out of your minds? That thing is still out there. We’re not leaving this island until we kill Kong.”

Mason glanced at Conrad, trying to get an idea of what he was intending to do next, but he wasn’t looking away from Packard. Behind Packard, eight men, only two of them injured, looked back at the two of them. None of them had known there were more survivors on the island. After the explosions at the lake, they’d come from all directions, all eight of them pissed, loyal to Packard, and out for revenge. Mason remembered taking their pictures on the ship’s top deck. She saw none of their lighthearted smiles now, every face was grim. 

She didn’t hate them for being loyal to Packard. Unlike the survivors they’d been traveling with (who had all gone to the boat), this new bunch knew next to nothing about what was going on. Except that Kong had killed the rest of them, and that Packard was intending to kill Kong. That seemed to sit nicely with all of them. But now Packard was ordering them to do something else, and Conrad was the only thing stopping them.

“Listen to yourself, Packard. You’ve lost it. She’s a civilian, I’m not about to let you use her as bait.”

“I don’t remember asking you.”

Packard stepped forward, and Conrad stepped back. One rifle against nine was bad odds, and after the fight at the lake, Mason was pretty sure there was no convincing Packard. 

She looked at the men behind him. “Kong protects the islands from the skull-crawlers. That giant lizard thing he killed? They come up from underground. Kong is the only thing keeping them in check—with him gone there’s nothing to stop their population, what if they got off the island—?”

She stopped talking abruptly, looking over the men’s heads. For once, she spotted the danger before Conrad, and grabbed his arm. 

“Move!”

She shoved him, finding him startlingly difficult to knock over, but knocking him out of the way only a second before a sharp segmented leg punched into the earth where he had been standing. Behind Packard, the soldiers erupted into chaos, and Conrad pulled Mason to her feet.

“Run.” His voice wasn’t loud, but it carried. The two of them bolted for the treeline as gunfire rang out behind them. Mason didn’t need Conrad’s hand on her shoulder reminding her to keep low, but she was glad it was there, especially when puffs of dirt started exploding around them. Someone was shooting at them, and Mason would bet money that it was Packard. Leave it to him to ignore a giant man-eating spider in favor of something that had really pissed him off.

She heard Conrad make a sound as he ran next to her, it might have been a swearword, but they were busy climbing a rise in the dirt just before the treeline, their feet digging into the soft black soil, and she didn’t even look to see what he was swearing about. She slowed when they got to the trees, but Conrad pushed her on.

“He’s not gonna stop. We have to get back to the boat before he does.”

They scaled a steep hillside of tumbled rocks, and Mason finally looked back at Conrad when she realized he was falling behind.

“Wait, did you get shot?”

“Not badly, but we still need to get back to the boat.”

“No, stop. Stop.” Mason looked back at the edge of the forest. There was no sign of Packard and the others yet, and the sounds of gunfire were continuing. The spider had bought them a little time. “Let me see. Where.”

“What, you’re a medic now?”

Mason didn’t feel the need to dignify that comment with a response, helping Conrad up onto one of the larger rocks next to her. He winced as he sat, and she tried to take stock. His blue shirt was black and tacky with blood over his right hip, and she cursed under her breath.

“It’s alright.” He pulled his shirt up to take a look himself, probing with his hand. “It went through, and I can still run. We can find something to use as a bandage back at the boat.” He looked back towards the forest’s edge. “If we don’t keep moving we’re in a lot more trouble.” Mason looked dubiously at him, and he met her gaze. “I’m serious. If this slows me down, that’s my problem to deal with, but we can’t stop now, or that’s two people gone.”

Mason shook her head, but she helped him up, watching him flinch as she did. “Fine. But we deal with it as soon as we can.”

“Deal.” Conrad looked behind them. “I don’t hear any more guns. We need to move.”

He pushed forward, following an open space in the undergrowth that led them down the other side of the slope. Mason followed him, watching closely. The location of his injury was going to make this hard. Even if he wasn’t that badly hurt, which she wasn’t yet convinced of, getting around the island required a lot of climbing due to the rugged terrain, and he was going to start losing strength pretty quickly if he kept bleeding like that. And that wasn’t even considering the idea that he might start finding it pretty difficult to use his right arm. 

“He’s not a bad guy, you know.” 

She hadn’t been expecting Conrad to start talking, but it was what he said that startled Mason. “What?”

“Colonel Packard. He’s doing what he thinks is right.”

Mason was unimpressed. “Yeah, well, he’s gonna get us all killed.”

“Maybe so. Have you read Moby Dick?”

Mason gave him a look that she hoped conveyed the fact that she didn’t find this funny. “Yes.” She hadn’t, actually, but she had a pretty good idea of the plot.

Conrad shrugged, as though that explained things. “He’s Ahab.”

“And that makes him not a bad guy because…?”

“He’s got to win. Kong’s the ultimate enemy, and he can’t let that go. Something unbeatable doesn’t make sense to him: he’s a soldier, in his mind, you either win or die. He’s already had to give up once, all those men he lost in Vietnam feel like pointless deaths because they didn’t win the war. He can’t do that again. He’s lost too much. He’d sacrifice everything he has left to kill Kong.”

“Great. Didn’t Ahab get his whole crew killed because he wouldn’t give up?”

Conrad tipped his head. She couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or not. “That’s why I’m here.”

Considering the bleeding hole in his side and the number of men they’d already lost, that struck Mason as a pretty arrogant statement, but Conrad said it so quietly she wasn’t actually sure how he meant it.

They walked in silence for a while longer, both of them listening for the sound of Packard and his men coming behind them. When Conrad started to lose his footing on the next downward slope, she moved closer to him. “Why do you care if I think he’s a good guy or not?”

“I don’t. If he kills one of us, or Kong, it won’t matter what kind of man he is. You can practically see him unraveling, and if the best chance at survival we have is an appeal to his better nature I suspect we’re probably out of luck.” Conrad’s foot slipped, but he caught himself. “I didn’t want to believe it, and now there are less of us. You saw how many people that lizard thing killed. If we’re going to try to survive this, we need to know what’s going on with him.”

Mason wasn’t completely convinced by this logic, but she supposed she understood what he was getting at. “Fine. I’ll keep that in mind when he uses me as bait for killing Kong.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Conrad’s voice was much sharper suddenly, and Mason decided to drop the subject. They got most of the rest of the way to the boat in silence. It was easier, since the others had gone this way: Conrad didn’t have much trouble picking up and following the path they’d taken. They were almost to the boat when gunshots rang out in the distance again, and they both froze, looking in the direction of the sound. 

“The good news is, I think we lost them.” Mason muttered.

“Or they split up so we wouldn’t know they were following us.” Conrad’s face looked tense, and Mason wasn’t sure if it was from his injury or from the possibility of being followed by Packard. Either way, he definitely looked pale under all the dirt, and she finally reached out to help him, pulling his arm over her shoulders. He let her do it, and she felt him shift to put some of his weight on her. “Thank you.”

They got over the final rise before the river, and Mason slowed as they made their way down the steep sandy slope just before the bank. They were almost to the bottom when Conrad’s foot slipped in the sand, completely going out from under him. The suddenness of his weight was what made it impossible for Mason to keep her balance, and they both fell. 

She heard Conrad grunt, a sound more like a rush of air than anything else, but she was trying hard not to slide down the sand into the river, digging in her heels to stop her downward momentum on the slippery surface. She skidded to a stop just before the water, and twisted her head to look for Conrad. He was on his back, one of his heels dug into the sand like hers were. He’d come to a stop a little bit sooner than she had, but his eyes were shut tight and he was pressing both hands to his wound. The air had gotten knocked from her lungs when she fell, and she gulped air to get it back.

“Conrad, you ok?”

“Mm.” 

He didn’t sound ok. Mason sat up, stiffly, to get a better look at him, but he was already sitting up himself. His hands were still firmly clamped over his injury, and she thought if his lips got any thinner they would be in danger of disappearing, but he looked down the shore instead of at her.

“Boat’s that way.”

“I can see that.” Mason crawled up the bank to him. “Can you walk?” 

A single nod was all she got in response, but it was all she needed. She helped him off the steep part of the bank, and he leaned heavily on her, but his legs didn’t fold. There was nothing else to say, and Mason didn’t want to waste the breath anyway. 

“Guys!”

Someone on the boat hailed them before she called to them, and she wasn’t sure who had spoken until she saw Slivko’s headband.

“Shit, are you guys ok?” More heads appeared around the boat, coming up from the lower platform, but Slivko was already off the boat, heading towards them. “What happened?” He pulled Conrad’s other arm over his shoulder, and between the two of them, they supported him towards the boat. 

“Packard.” Mason leaned forward so she could look at Slivko, but he was staring at Conrad’s bloody shirt. She couldn’t help noticing that Conrad’s eyes were closed. “More men from your unit showed up. They came to the explosion, and Packard decided to make another go at killing Kong.”

That got Slivko’s attention, and he looked up at her, expression confused. “How?”

“By using Weaver as bait.” Apparently conscious, although his eyes were still closed, Conrad spoke up. “He realized he didn’t have enough explosives to draw Kong in again, not if he wanted to kill him with explosives too.”

“So he was going to—”

“Tie me to a cliffside and set off one of the last seismic charges under me. He thinks Kong would show up. Then they’d throw more seismic charges down on his head.”

“What? That’s… why you? And—what men from my unit?”

“Doesn’t matter. They’ll all end up dead unless someone stops Packard.” Conrad’s tone was somewhat clipped, and Slivko looked back at him, eyes wide. 

“So how did you get hurt?”

“Packard shot him.” Mason’s voice was blunt

“Something’s not right with him here.” That was Mills, reaching down from the boat. Mason had barely spent any time with him, but he seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders, and she was counting on him siding with them if it came to that, even against his commanding officer. She unslung Conrad’s arm from her shoulders so that he could reach up to Mills. Slivko supported him from below and between the two of them they managed to get Conrad up onto the boat, where he quickly sat with his back against one of the metal struts, and didn’t make any motion to move again.

“Conrad’s been shot, shouldn’t we deal with that?” Mason pulled herself up onto the boat, looking down at Conrad to see that he hadn’t bothered to open his eyes to raise an eyebrow at her. 

“We need to get the boat moving first. Do you want to see Packard come out of those trees?” 

“We can’t. The boat’s busted.” Mills sounded resigned.

“What?” Conrad asked at the same time as Mason. “How did that happen?”

Slivko came over the side of the boat. “Those bird things. The ones who took Nieves.” 

Conrad cursed. “Can you fix it, Slivko?”

“If I have enough time, yeah, but what if we miss the exit window?” 

Conrad fell silent for a moment, and Mason shook her head, looking at Marlow, who just came up from the back of the boat. He looked grim when he got a look at Conrad.

“I’ll get something to put on that.”

“You have medicine?” That surprised her.

“No, but when you’ve lived here as long as I have, you pick some things up.” He started back for the back of the ship and Mason started to follow him, but Conrad stopped both of them.

“Marlow, wait.” His eyes were open now, and his face had the same intense look it had right after their helicopter had been downed. “How far are we from the north side of the island?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe two miles?”

Conrad was calculating, Mason could practically watch it going on behind his eyes. “Alright. Weaver, Marlow, San, Brooks, you make your way towards the north side. Try to keep close to the river. Slivko, you’re with me. We’ll do what we can to fix the boat. If we get it moving we’ll make contact with the rest of you and continue to the north side of the island.” He looked up at Mason. “If you get to the north side and you haven’t heard from us, signal the helicopters. Get on board, and give them our location, send one of them back for us. Tell them to keep high. We’ll fire a flare for them if we have to abandon the boat.”

“And Packard?” Mason had to ask. She didn’t like this plan.

“I’m guessing Packard will follow us here. But he’s looking for you, not Slivko or me. We’ll do what we can to talk his crew out of following him into this madness. Maybe we can get a couple to stick with us, and more of us can go home.”

As much as she hated it, Mason couldn’t find any serious flaws in Conrad’s plan. He wasn’t up for a trek through the jungle, but they had to get to the north side. They only had a few hours before their exit window closed. She looked at Marlow. “That check out with you?”

Marlow didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “Splitting up’s a bad idea. Easier to eat when we split up.”

“Harder to find, though.” Conrad was looking at Mason when he said this, but she knew he was thinking of Packard. He was the one who looked at Slivko. “That alright with you?”

Slivko nodded very quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.”

Marlow had moved to the back of the boat again and returned with the small bag he’d been carrying. “We’re not going anywhere until we take a look at that.”

“If we stay still too long, that’ll be the least of our problems.” Conrad pulled his shirt up as he spoke though, sitting up and away from the wall to unhook the straps that held his gun holster in place. From this angle Mason could see that he’d been right: the wound went straight through. His shirt was soaked and stiff in both the front and back, and from the trail it left on his skin when he pulled up the fabric, the blood was soaked into the waistband of his pants as well. “Slivko.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll need your headband.”

Mason moved to the front of the boat to keep watch on the forest’s edge as Slivko pulled off the headband and Marlow pulled a pair of thick leaves from the pouch. She’d seen plenty of injured men being treated with ersatz medicine during her time embedded, but she’d rarely heard someone make as little fuss about it as Conrad was doing. Under Conrad’s direction, Slivko had made his way back to the engine, and everyone else was grabbing their gear.

Mason didn’t like this plan. She really didn’t like this plan.


	2. Missteps (Slivko)

Slivko couldn’t help being distracted as Marlow worked on Conrad’s injury. He was supposed to be working on the engine, and sure, he was making progress on the damage, but all he could focus on was the blood he’d seen on Conrad’s stomach when the man had pulled up his shirt, how every time he looked up he could see Conrad’s feet braced against an uneven section of the floor, tension in every line of his body as Marlow worked to clean and bandage the wound. 

It wasn’t as though Slivko was a stranger to injuries, but they were something he’d never quite gotten over the shock of. People were in one piece, and then they weren’t. They could stand, give orders, run, and then they couldn’t. Of course he understood it, he’d seen it happen countless times in Vietnam, but he had never satisfactorily wrapped his mind around how a person’s chances of survival could drop so abruptly, and now it had happened to Conrad, and Slivko was freaking out. 

Conrad was supposed to be the one who was going to get them out of here. Slivko had heard the rumors at the beginning of the trip, before they’d all been knocked from the sky by a giant monkey, about just how much Conrad was being paid to be here. At the time they’d all had a good laugh about it, how he’d managed to shake down the scientists like that. They’d thought he was stuck up, avoiding the guys on the ship’s top deck, disappearing every chance he got, making a point of standing at the edge of the room when they were all called in for their briefing. They’d mocked him for that later, when the meeting had split up. His clipped accent didn’t help: they’d had a good time doing impressions.

Now though… Slivko’s eyes were dragged back to Conrad when he heard the man make a muted sound of pain. His face was practically white under all the dirt, and Slivko could hear Marlow talking to him. 

“I know those leaves burn like all hell, but it’s what they’ve got around here for keeping things from getting infected. Won’t heal any faster, but won’t go green on you, either.”

“Thank you.” Despite the tension Slivko could see even in Conrad’s throat, his voice sounded normal, and he sounded like he meant it. “Now you and the rest of them need to move. We’ll find a way to signal you if we get the boat working.”

Marlow went back to the back of the boat to grab his stuff, and Slivko almost started when Mills put a hand on his arm. “You ok here?”

Slivko nodded. Without the headband, his hair flopped when he did it. “Yeah. Be careful, ok?”

“You too.” Mills watched him hard for another second before following the others off the boat. They both knew better than to say goodbyes in a situation like this, but Slivko appreciated Mills’ question. He watched the group disappear into the treeline, and then he and Conrad were alone. Slivko continued working, pretending he wasn’t also watching Conrad catch his breath. Whatever Marlow had put on his wound seemed to really hurt, but Conrad stretched his back slightly to straighten it and took several slow breaths.

“You alright, Slivko?”

Slivko hadn’t thought he was being obvious, but when he looked at Conrad’s face the man’s annoyingly blue eyes were fixed on his from across the boat. They looked even bluer now, with Conrad’s face pale and streaked with mud.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Well you did get knocked out. And your commanding officer is losing his marbles, so it seems like a fair question.” Conrad shifted again. Some of the tension was leaving his frame, but it occurred to Slivko he’d never actually seen Conrad properly relaxed. They had bigger concerns right now, but that struck Slivko as a bit sad. He was surprised when Conrad kept talking. “Also last time we got separated from your mates you seemed a bit stressed out by it.” There was only a hint of humor in Conrad’s voice, but Slivko recognized the tone, and simply stared at him for a moment before he felt a smile break across his face. 

“Did you just make a joke?”

“I might have. Seriously though, are you ok?”

Slivko laughed, still startled. It was the first joke he’d heard Conrad make. It was a weak attempt at one, sure, but it made him feel a great deal better. “Yeah, last time we got separated from them we’d just been attacked by something that looked like it shouldn’t even exist, so.” That was a sobering memory, but Slivko was very used to using humor to deal with those. “I mean after that, the rest of this is just…” Slivko made a sound like a raspberry. Conrad didn’t laugh, but his eyes crinkled with amusement.

“Alright.” Conrad reached up with his left hand, pulling himself to his feet, and Slivko started, dropping his makeshift wrench and darting out from behind the controls.

“Wait, shouldn’t you…” Slivko stopped at the look Conrad was giving him.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do before those helicopters show up, so point me at something I can work on.”

Neither Conrad’s tone nor his expression brokered any argument. Slivko had been startled, back when they’d first gotten on the boat, to discover that Conrad was actually a fairly capable mechanic, or anyway knew enough to make himself useful. It had been the first time Slivko had felt himself to be on the same footing as Conrad, and not following three steps behind: it had turned out that Conrad was extremely good at taking direction, and would turn to Slivko to ask if he had questions. Slivko was used to guys faking it until they broke something, but Conrad was careful and worked quickly. He didn’t want to admit it, because Conrad should be resting, but he could really use his help in fixing the engine. 

In the end, he set him to mending hoses. Conrad could sit down while he worked, and the hoses really did need fixing. Those bird things, whatever they were, had really done a number on any that they found exposed. 

Slivko found himself a part he could work on independent from the control panel and parked himself nearby, keeping half an eye on the sky and half an eye on Conrad. The man kept glancing up, and although Slivko had seen him nervous and this wasn’t that, he was definitely on edge.

“You ok?” Slivko finally found himself asking the question, realizing he should have done it sooner, but also feeling stupid for asking. Conrad had been shot, after all. That was, in Slivko’s experience, the very definition of ‘not ok.’

At least Conrad seemed to understand why he’d asked. “Sorry. Just trying to keep an ear out for Packard.” He surveyed Slivko for a moment. “Slivko, I need you to do me a favor.”

That sounded ominous, and Slivko didn’t like it. “What?”

Conrad tied off a section of tubing. “If Packard follows our trail back to the boat, you need to keep out of sight.” He seemed to anticipate Slivko’s flat refusal, because he kept going. “I keep getting in his way, but you actually turned on him. I know he must have been a good commander in the past but now he’s angry and unstable. I don’t have anything he wants, and I don’t think he’ll see me as a threat now that I’m injured. But you turned the rest of your unit against him, so I need you to stay out of sight. There are enough things on this island that want to kill us, we don’t need to waste bullets on each other.”

It was that last statement, more than anything else, that chilled Slivko. He remembered how Packard had advanced on Conrad with the detonator when Conrad had stood between him and Kong. The ease with which Conrad could have killed Packard then, but didn’t. And now Packard had shot Conrad instead, and for what? For refusing to use a civilian as bait. But it wasn’t Packard Slivko was really concerned with, not anymore. It was everyone else.

“What about the other men in my unit? If they follow him they’ll get killed.”

Conrad grimaced. “I’ll do what I can to convince the other men, but in the end it’s up to them.”

Slivko hated that he was right, but he couldn’t argue with that. In the end, he agreed. Reluctantly. Conrad seemed slightly more at ease after that, but only just.

They worked in silence after that, only occasionally broken by Conrad asking a question. It was strange for Slivko to be alone with him, stranger still to be alone with him like this. Slivko couldn’t quiet express what it was about him, but there was something about the way Conrad carried himself that was extremely physical. Slivko had barely seen him even sit down. Now Conrad was sitting, knees cocked slightly, his focus on the cracked and ripped hoses in his hands, and Slivko was staring, which he realized belatedly when Conrad looked up at him again.

“What?”

It wasn’t an unfriendly question, but Slivko almost flushed. “Nothing.” He hesitated. He was having a thought he’d had a number of times in Vietnam and had always pushed back, superstitious. For some reason this time it came to his lips, maybe because it was easier than accounting for why he’d been staring at Conrad. “I’m surprised we’re still alive.”

That startled an honest-to-god laugh out of Conrad, which Slivko hadn’t expected. “Given everything that’s happened, I am too.”

That also surprised Slivko. Everything he’d heard Conrad say about their odds of survival, at least to the group, had been relatively optimistic, or at least pragmatic. Slivko remembered being horrified by Conrad’s immediate analysis of the situation once they’d all crawled clear of the crashed helicopter, but he had to admit it had kept the group from panicking. Which, in retrospect, had probably been the point, there was no way Conrad had been as calm as he’d acted. Which was what made his answer surprising. 

“Really? I thought it was like, your job to pretend things were going ok.” 

Conrad raised an eyebrow. “I’m not that good a liar, and you’re not that big an idiot.” He looked at the edge of the forest again. “We still might make it out of here alive, but only because we’ve been extremely lucky, given the circumstances.”

“What, the circumstances like the giant monsters trying to kill us?”

“Well, that and everyone who knows something useful keeping it to themselves until people start dying.” Conrad’s voice was painfully dry, and he let his head rest back on the metal strut his back was braced against. “This could have gone very differently.”

Slivko hesitated. “If you’d known about the monsters, would you have come?”

Conrad shook his head. “Absolutely not. We shouldn’t be here, that’s why we’re dying in droves.”

“I thought you specialized in this kind of thing.”

“If by ‘this kind of thing’ you mean keeping people alive when things go wrong, then yes. But it’s much easier if I can keep things from going wrong in the first place.” Slivko noticed Conrad’s hands unwinding a wire, and was shocked to see that they weren’t steady. “I knew Randa was lying about something, but I wasn’t suspicious enough until I went to the briefing meeting.”

“The bombs.” Slivko said, remembering Conrad’s pointed question, then wincing when he remembered cracking a joke about the bombs himself.

“Weaver and I both had our suspicions, but…” Conrad shook his head, checking the sky. “Never in a million years would I have thought of something like this.”

“You’re angry.” Slivko said it at the same time he realized it, and for a moment Conrad met his eyes with an intensity that took Slivko aback. 

“Aren’t you?”

Slivko was saved from answering by the sound of cracking branches in the woods. Both he and Conrad stiffened like startled cats, grabbing for their guns. For a moment there was silence, or Slivko thought there was silence, then Conrad spoke softly, his voice urgent. 

“That’s Packard. You need to go.”

“What--?”

“Now, Slivko. Go!” 

Slivko moved. He dropped into the hole in the deck where the engine access was, and Conrad pushed a sheet of steel over the opening. Slivko felt his way through the dark—most of the underbelly of the boat was hollow, which was why it sat so high in the water, despite being made almost entirely of metal. He reached the front of the boat where the deck rose up, and found a hole he could look through. To his surprise, Conrad wasn’t standing, or holding his gun at ready, but he watched the forest and his face was tense. Slivko had his gun, but the hole he was looking through wasn’t nearly big enough to make use of it. 

He didn’t realize the men had emerged from the forest until he heard them climbing aboard.

“You alone up here, Mr. Conrad?” Packard’s voice was unmistakable. 

“I am.” Conrad’s gun was across his lap, but he shouldered the strap as he stood with difficulty. “She’s gone, Packard.”

“Really. So if I search the forest I won’t find her just inside the treeline?”

“You might find parts of her. Those bird-things grabbed her when we got on board.” Conrad pointed to the shredded hoses. 

“And the others, they’re gone too? That’s Slivko’s headband you’re using as a bandage, isn’t it? He around here somewhere?”

Conrad’s voice was tight with annoyance. “I don’t know where the others are. After you shot me this was about as far as I got, and the others had already left when we arrived. Slivko left his headband behind, I don’t know if he’s alive or not.” He looked at the other men. “Listen, there’s no point in continuing to try to kill Kong. We’re outmatched, and we’re running out of time. The exit window ends today, if we don’t get to the north side of the island, we’re all going to be stuck here.”

Slivko watched some of the men shifting uncomfortably, but Conrad turned his attention back to Packard.

“I didn’t meet up with them so I don’t know for certain, but I’m guessing everyone else who’s still alive is making their way towards the north side of the island. If we get the boat fixed quickly, we can catch up. There’s no reason this has to end in more bloodshed.”

“I think it’s awfully convenient that Weaver’s gone.” Packard voice had that lighthearted tone Slivko was starting to understand it got when he was lying. “Don’t you think so? Our best shot at killing Kong, gone without a trace.”

“None of that matters now.” Conrad snapped. “It’s done. You’re not killing Kong.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. I think we’ve got one last shot at this, and like hell are my men’s deaths going to go unanswered.”

Conrad’s expression was uncertain. “What are you planning?”

“We’ve already set up the seismic charges. And with Weaver gone, who’s the other person Kong’s interacted with and not killed?”

Slivko felt a thrill of horror in his chest when he understood, at the same moment Conrad leveled his gun at Packard.

“This is insanity. Just leave it alone, Packard.”

“Take his gun.”

There was about half a second where Slivko wasn’t sure if Conrad was about to start shooting. Conrad didn’t look like he’d decided either, but when the men in Slivko’s unit got closer he pulled the gun off his shoulder and used it as a blunt weapon instead. 

He knocked down two of the men before they even had a chance to react. Slivko couldn’t believe how fast he was, especially injured. Maybe realizing that individually he would likely outmatch all of them, the rest of the men rushed him at once. Slivko couldn’t see clearly enough what was happening, but he was torn. He needed to help Conrad. What if he came above the deck of the boat and tried to convince the men? But what could he say that Conrad hadn’t already? He wasn’t through sorting it out when the scuffle ended. Conrad was still struggling, but his gun was gone, and the men pulled him to his feet. Slivko watched anxiously as Packard stepped forward towards the man, but Conrad just looked pissed.

“And how are you intending to get out of here after the exit window’s closed?” He was out of breath, and Slivko found himself nervously clutching his gun as he watched Packard advance on him. 

“We can make it.” Packard’s voice contained no trace of humor, and Slivko watched Conrad’s bright blue eyes searching the man’s face for something. Whatever he was looking for, he didn’t find it, because Packard’s fist made contact with his stomach, hard enough that Slivko could hear the sound of impact from under the deck. Conrad dropped. The men holding him up let him go, but he didn’t even seem to notice. He was on his hands and knees, but Slivko could see that his arms were shaking as he gasped and gulped for breath, and Slivko realized belatedly that Packard had squarely punched Conrad’s wound.

Hot anger surged in Slivko’s stomach, and he tried to get back to the hole in the deck. He had to do something. In his rush though, his feet tangled in cable, and he fell hard, his gun flying out of reach. In the near-complete darkness, he could only feel for it as sounds continued from above deck.

“Get him up. And tie his hands.” There was a sound of scuffing on the metal deck, and Packard raised his voice. “Let’s go, men! The sooner we kill this giant sonofabitch, the sooner we can make it to the rendezvous point. Now let’s move!”

Slivko finally laid hands on his gun, moments after the sounds from above deck had stopped. He could hear the men moving off, but couldn’t rationalize what had just happened, and scrambled for the hole in the deck. He pushed the sheet metal aside easily and climbed up, gun over his shoulder, just in time to see the men disappearing into the trees. Conrad was nearly in the back, trailed by two men Slivko didn’t know very well. He was walking unaided, but with a heavy limp, and he didn’t seem steady, so Slivko imagined that wouldn’t last for long. He didn’t look back as they vanished among the trees, and Slivko cursed. The wave of panic didn’t hit until the forms of the men were gone.

They were going to get Conrad killed. And everyone who could help was gone, moving as fast as they could towards the north side of the island. There was no way Slivko could catch up to them. But Slivko couldn’t take on eight men, and Packard, all by himself. 

He looked down at his hands to see they were shaking. He had to go after Conrad. He knew that, but he didn’t know how he would be able to help. All he could think of was Conrad wading through a fog of toxic gas to save his life, how they’d almost both gotten killed because Conrad didn’t cut and run when the skull-crawler headed for them. How he’d insisted on helping Slivko afterwards, when Slivko had been so rattled he wasn’t steady on his feet. Stupidly, the sound of the laugh he’d startled Conrad into kept going through his head, how Conrad had let Slivko take his weight when they were trying to get to the boat, the way it felt knowing Conrad trusted him. 

There really wasn’t a second option here. He had to try to stop them.


	3. Climbing (Conrad)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who's been leaving comments, you're all literally the best and you're keeping me writing this. We're back to Slivko next chapter!! Also apologies to anyone who's waiting for ch. 4-- that should be up this weekend! I started a full time job, so I have a lot less time to write, but I promise I'll finish this fic.

Conrad was trying really hard to convince himself Slivko wouldn’t come after him, because he was having trouble coming up with a scenario in which that wouldn’t get both of them killed. He was already kicking himself for getting taken off-guard by Packard a second time, if Slivko got hurt or killed because of it…

He set his eyes forward. He had to focus, because the alternative was dwelling on that thought.

Ahead of him, Packard forged his way through thick undergrowth. Conrad would have chosen a different way for the group to go, one that had less brush to struggle through, but he was hardly being consulted on their route. His hands were tied in front of him, and one of the soldiers had an arm around his ribs, helping him to walk. He thought the soldier’s name might be Tallis, or Turner. His vision was a little blurry with pain and exertion, and he was having trouble making out the man’s dogtag.

The soldier’s support wasn’t helping all that much, but Conrad was determined to stay upright. He’d already fallen once, and he was trying hard not to do it again. Packard’s reaction the first time was to point a gun at him and wonder out loud if they needed live bait, so as priorities went, not falling again was up near the top of the list, despite the shooting pain in his side every time he put down his right foot.

He couldn’t imagine that they were going all that far, if the idea was just to find a cliff face. The island was lousy with them, but the group had been walking for at least twenty minutes and was showing no signs of stopping. Conrad was in no rush to get to their destination, but he was very ready to stop walking. With nothing else to do, his mind kept going back to Slivko, and how he’d left him on the boat alone.

It wasn’t that he didn’t think Slivko could fix the boat on his own, take it up the river and meet up with the others. It was that he didn’t think Slivko would do it if it meant leaving Conrad on his own with Packard.

Conrad had been surprised on at least three different occasions by Slivko, but that by itself wasn’t startling. Conrad found people annoyingly difficult to figure out. He only ever seemed to be able to sort out people he was supposed to be protecting: even on this mission that was true. For example, Marlow basically had two priorities: getting home, and making sure nothing hurt Kong. That was basically in line with Conrad’s priorities at this point, so despite the fact that the man’s nervous giggling had a tendency to really grate on Conrad’s nerves, he knew he could depend on Marlow, and on his expertise about the island. Conrad had already overlooked the man’s advice once, he wasn’t likely to do it again, although at this point he doubted he’d even get a chance to.

Weaver was different, something like the sister Conrad had never gotten a chance to have. Which was to say that she was tough, she didn’t take his crap, and he didn’t totally get what was going on with her at any given time, but he respected her judgement and found that he enjoyed when she mouthed off at him. It invited banter, something Conrad was only semi-used to. Most situations he was in absolutely did not invite banter. He had faith in her ability to survive all this, and he was refusing to seriously contemplate the possibility that she wouldn’t, mostly because he didn’t want to imagine that.

Slivko, he had yet to figure out.

Conrad had thought he was trigger-happy, at first. But after Conrad stopped him from shooting at the giant herbivore they’d seen, Slivko had started looking to Conrad for when to hold his gun at ready, only raising his weapon when Conrad already had his up. So then Conrad had thought that Slivko was one of those people who felt in need of a leader. But Slivko had been the one to turn on Packard, leading the rest of his unit to do the same.

The only thing Conrad was really sure about regarding Slivko was that his heart was in the right place—he was worried about the rest of his unit right from the jump, he wouldn’t abandon them, even when they really should have tried to get out of Kong’s range in the helicopter. People were important to Slivko, and he wasn’t afraid to look silly in front of them, which was something Conrad hadn’t encountered in a long, long time. And on top of all the rest of it, he was capable: he’d almost single-handedly fixed Marlow’s mess of a half-built boat in only about eight hours, and although their helicopter had gone down like the rest with Slivko in the pilot’s seat, he’d gotten them through the storm, and had stayed out of Kong’s way in the air—it was mostly due to bad luck that they’d gone down.

More troublingly for Conrad, he was finding himself thinking about him. A lot. Too much, if Conrad was being honest. He wasn’t really a stranger to the feeling that implied, but the timing was terrible. He’d be lucky if Slivko survived, let alone if he got a chance to so much as talk with him again, forget getting to know him better.

Conrad had been on a lot of missions that went quite badly wrong, but this was shaping up to uncontestably be the worst, which was saying quite a lot. He’d be lucky if he himself survived. Assuming Slivko didn’t do anything terribly risky and also assuming he managed to keep out of the way of anything that wanted to eat him (which was a lot to assume on this island), Conrad was in a lot more danger than he was. But he was still worried about Slivko.

He realized how little he’d been focusing on his surroundings when the man supporting him stopped moving unexpectedly, and Conrad stumbled awkwardly to a stop next to him, his right leg nearly giving out again. Whatever part of his mind had stayed in survival mode as they walked was telling him that pain and blood loss were starting to take a predictable toll, accounting for his nearly trance-like musings. He knew better than to clock out like that, that was by far the easiest way to die in terrain like this. Without any way to solve either the pain or the blood loss issue, Conrad didn’t find that information particularly helpful right now, but he made an effort to rouse himself and get his bearings.

He was pretty sure they’d been travelling almost due west, which, based on Marlow’s advice and their own past experience, was bad news. Judging by where the sun was, it had been nearly an hour since they’d left the boat, which was a hell of a long way to walk if Packard was serious about trying to get to the north side of the island in time. In the distance, Conrad could hear the bird things that had taken Nieves and attacked the boat, but he couldn’t see them through the trees. Looking up told him something else though, which was that they’d arrived at their destination.

Two thoughts battled in Conrad’s head for a moment as he looked up at the cliff face. The first was that, as ambush sites went, it wasn’t a bad one: it was probably one of the few cliffs Conrad had seen so far that actually looked significantly taller than Kong, which would make throwing explosives down on his head much easier for Packard’s men. The second thought was that there was no possible way Conrad would be able to climb that mountain right now, but Packard would probably kill him if he didn’t.

He didn’t get a chance to dwell on either of these thoughts, because the group had only been pausing. Beginning to walk again was an act of willpower, and Conrad knew he was starting to sag against the man helping him. He was in no condition to try to fight his way out of this, not after Packard’s punch and walking for nearly an hour with a gunshot wound. It wouldn’t be so bad if he was certain the bleeding had stopped, but whatever Marlow’s leaves were doing for the wound, it wasn’t that. His waistband was rough with drying blood, but still damp, and rubbed painfully against his hipbone every time he took a step, somehow adding insult to literal injury—it hurt badly enough to walk as it was.

His best bet at this point was to try to convince the men that Packard wasn’t a fit commander anymore, but they’d followed Packard all the way through Vietnam, where presumably he hadn’t yet given completely in to his megalomaniac side. It had taken even Slivko several hours with Packard and a crisis to turn on him. The other men who’d abandoned Packard had been with him for days without doing the same, so the chances of turning these soldiers against him in such a short amount of time was very slim. But Conrad was basically out of other options. For a moment he found himself wishing, incongruously, that Slivko actually was there. Despite the fact that it would put them both in a lot more danger, Conrad suspected Slivko would have a much easier time convincing the men than he himself would. Slivko was one of them—more than that, he was very popular with them, and the other men he’d managed to turn seemed to trust his judgement even over Packard’s. Conrad not only wasn’t one of them, he didn’t sound like them. He had barely met any of these men, he was here as a prisoner at this point, and only an hour ago he’d given a couple of them quite bad bruises. For all he knew, they thought he’d been in league with Randa, and had gotten them in this mess to begin with. They had less than no reason to trust him.

Conrad realized his head was swimming somewhat. He’d lost track of himself, again. The scenery hadn’t changed much, but moving uphill at this rate wasn’t something Conrad was going to be able to keep up for all that long, and he turned his attention to the man helping him, halfheartedly hoping to start a conversation.

“Can I borrow your canteen?” He realized as he asked it that he actually was quite thirsty, probably dehydrated, something he’d amazingly managed to avoid up until this point.

The man ignored him, and Conrad normally would have left it at that, but these weren’t exactly normal circumstances, and he couldn’t afford to wait any longer to try something, so he’d have to try something else.

“Packard!” He had to raise his voice to get it to reach the man, and Packard’s expression when he slowed to a stop and turned to face Conrad told him just how thin ice he was on. He didn’t flinch when the man approached, though.

“Something I can help you with, Mr. Conrad?” Packard’s voice nearly dripped with sarcasm as he stopped in front of him, and Conrad consciously reminded himself that he’d probably only get one more shot at convincing the men, and this was it.

“Think about what you’re doing. What’s your priority here, getting your men off the island, or killing Kong?” He refused to look away from Packard’s face, absorbing the flat anger he saw there. Now that they were stopped, he was also trying hard to quietly catch his breath.

“You called me back here just to ask me that?”

“What’s your answer?” Conrad didn’t back down. The only way he was surviving this was if one of these men came to their senses, or if Slivko followed them and did something monumentally dangerous to stop Packard from killing Kong. Slivko hadn’t seen Kong like Conrad had, so his interest in keeping him alive wasn’t quite as personal as it was for Conrad, but any bombs Packard rained down on Kong’s head would hit Conrad too if he was on that cliffside.

Conrad would only live if Kong lived—there wasn’t much Conrad was certain of at this point aside from that.

Packard watched him. He knew this was a trap, that Conrad was trying to get him to say something that would make his men turn on him. He was unbalanced, but he certainly wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t even actually insane—this was sanity with an obsession that had completely taken hold, which in Conrad’s experience, was at least several times more dangerous. Conrad didn’t have any trouble reading it in his face.

“I don’t think I need to justify myself to you.” Packard raised his voice to the group, turning away. “Would someone find a way to gag this man?”

“Your men deserve to know!” Conrad was angry now, and he sounded it. Someone’s hands were untying Slivko’s headband from around his waist, the only semblance of a bandage he had, and there wasn’t much Conrad could do to struggle at this point, but he tried. “They should know that you’ll get them all killed for your obsession. Your other men knew it, and left you to this crusade on your own. They’ll be dying because you don’t think their lives are as important as the lives of the men you lost. There are real threats out here, but you’re obsessed with the one that’s made it clear it just wants us to leave in peace—”

His voice cut off, strangled, as Slivko’s headband was forced into his dry mouth, and he tried not to gag on it. He could feel it tied tight behind his head, and for now there was nothing he could do about it. Packard had apparently decided the best way to deal with Conrad’s outburst was to completely ignore what he’d said, although he gave a last, dangerous look at Conrad before turning back around.

“Let’s move out!” Packard picked up speed when he started moving again, and Conrad was certain it wasn’t an accident. Some of the men were glancing at each other uneasily, but unease wasn’t quite strong enough to get them to stop following him, and they all fell in line, trailing Packard up the hill with Conrad unwillingly in tow. He only made it about a kilometer at the faster pace before he fell.

Even the man’s arm around his ribs wasn’t enough to keep him up. When his leg folded, it folded all the way, and he fell hard on his side, hard enough that his vision went white. He hit a rock on the way down—the slope was steep enough that he actually hit several as his momentum made him roll a short ways, unable to stop himself with his tied hands.

He didn’t try to get up when he came to a stop.

Conrad considered himself very pragmatic about self-preservation: the only reason he’d survived this long considering the places he’d been was that he planned. As soon as Conrad’s feet had hit the ground here, he’d had at least a few scenarios running in his head at any given moment to maximize the chances of survival for himself and the people under his protection.

But this was it. He’d run out of ways he could influence what was going on. The scenario was out of his control in every possible way. If he and Kong were going to survive this, someone was going to have to help him.

When he heard footsteps approaching he almost expected Packard to shoot him, or at least kick him, and despite the gag, he rolled over slightly to give the man a look that half-challenged him to do either.

It earned him nothing but a half-smile.

“Get him up!” Packard looked back at the men. “Two of you, just get him the hell up the mountain, we’re on a tight schedule.”

Conrad bit back a groan as they hoisted him up, one on each side supporting him by his tied arms and dragging him along. He forced his legs to work to avoid them bumping over every rock on the mountain, but they wouldn’t hold his weight, and the two men pulled him awkwardly, slowly up the mountain.

Packard’s plan would work, which was the problem. He actually could kill Kong this way, and Kong was self-appointed defender of the entire island, so of course he would come at the sound of another explosion. Conrad honestly didn’t know how Kong would react to bait, but he knew Kong would try to stop Packard from doing more damage to the island. He’d saved Weaver from drowning, and kept the skull-crawler from killing Conrad, but Conrad suspected Kong would know bait when he saw it. He just didn’t know what Kong would do about it.

Some things had become very clear to Conrad that night with Weaver up on the rock face when they’d come face-to-face with Kong: the main thing was that Conrad couldn’t in good conscience let anything happen to Kong. But secondary to that was the fact that Kong just wanted them to go in peace.

In Conrad’s experience it was rare, almost mythically so, to get an offer as good as that.

It had made Conrad feel very, very small: it would have been well within reason for Kong to kill them. Any human Conrad had met in a similar situation would have done so, but Kong had shown that he was better, compassionate and gentle despite being the size of a mountain, and it shamed Conrad to be in company with Packard, who would give up everything to kill him.

So now it was down to Slivko. As much as Conrad hoped, maybe a little desperately, that Slivko would keep himself out of danger, Slivko was also the last, best chance at survival for both Conrad and Kong. And there wasn’t a single thing Conrad could do about it, which he hated. He hated everything about this, but particularly that.

He was still thinking about it when they reached the top of the mountain, and saw the lines of ready explosives already in place.


	4. Under Pressure (Slivko)

Slivko didn’t know the first thing about tracking.

With that said, traveling across part of the island with Conrad had given him a slightly better sense of how to not move through underbrush quite so loudly. 

Packard’s group, from the sound of things, was breaking every single branch they came across and scuffing through fallen leaves, all while talking among themselves. Slivko wasn’t close enough to make out what they were saying, but he found pretty quickly that if he hung back and was careful where he stepped as he followed the sound of the noise, they wouldn’t hear him, and he could keep up with their progress without losing them. He couldn’t see what was going on, but until he had some idea what he was going to do he didn’t want to get closer.

What exactly did he think he could do to stop all of this? There was something about Packard that reminded Slivko of a car with no breaks—you couldn’t really stop him on your own, you just had to get out of the way. Only, in this case Packard was dragging nine people along with him, and one of them was Conrad. Slivko kept returning to that: even though he really couldn’t think of anything to do, he didn’t have a choice, he had to do something.

So he kept following them. He followed them all the way up the mountain. He froze for a while, listening hard when he heard Conrad raise his voice—it was the first time he’d heard Conrad at all since the group started walking, but when it stopped he didn’t hear him speak again. It made Slivko’s heart feel tight in his chest, but he hadn’t heard any gunshots. He kept thinking about what Conrad had said back at the boat.

There are enough things on this island that want to kill us, we don’t need to waste bullets on each other.

He hadn’t heard any gunshots, so Conrad must still be alive. Slivko couldn’t conceive of the man actually dying, but Vietnam had taught him that anyone could die, even someone like Conrad. He’d thought he’d known Packard—not well, no one really knows their commanding officer, but he’d trusted him. Now he just hoped no one else got killed because of him. He was still shaken by the bloodbath that had come from trying to find Chapman. He wondered if Packard had known Chapman was dead before Conrad had found his dogtags. 

The group in front of him stopped, which took Slivko a moment to realize. He suspected they’d made it to the top of the mountain. The slope seemed to be leveling off, so he made his way gingerly from tree to tree, keeping behind the trunks to stay out of sight, glad the top of this mountain was wooded at all: he’d seen several that weren’t. This wasn’t a waiting game though. He did his best to hurry forward, knowing Packard as a rule didn’t waste time.

Slivko’s heart was beating very loudly by the time he got to where he could see the group, looking through undergrowth so that they wouldn’t see him watching. 

For several anxious moments he couldn’t even see Conrad—the man was on the ground, back against a tree, and Slivko had to shift before he could see him properly. His heart twisted when he saw that Conrad was gagged, and again when he realized that they’d taken off the bandage to do it. It was difficult to read the man’s expression from this distance, but everything about his posture telegraphed exhaustion. There was no readiness to move in the way he was sitting, and he didn’t seem to be paying attention to what was going on. 

That didn’t seem like Conrad at all, and it worried Slivko.

He moved between the trees as quietly as he could, painfully aware of every stick that broke under his boots, but no one in Packard’s group seemed to notice him getting closer. Apparently they had bigger things on their minds—literally bigger, in this case, because if Slivko were to bet, he’d guess that the anticipation of Kong showing up was what had them all distracted. 

He had pretty good evidence to back this up—he was also terrified of Kong. 

He was taking Conrad and Weaver’s and Marlow’s word on what they’d said about the huge creature. He trusted them (maybe Conrad and Weaver more than Marlow), but the only times he himself had seen Kong had been during the bloodbath when they’d first arrived on the island, where a lot of guys just like him had been killed, and then again in the fights at the lakes. 

Slivko knew it had felt wrong to attack Kong when he’d followed Packard at the lake, and although he wasn’t totally sold on Marlow’s version of the story, he did trust Conrad and Weaver when they said they needed to keep Kong safe. But there had been a lot of collateral death, and he was still terrified. 

Slivko had no illusions about his role in Vietnam, and now here on this island: he’d always been expendable. Just one of a lot of guys a lot like him. It had taken him a little while to realize that was how things were back in Vietnam, but it was a lesson that once learned was not likely to be forgotten. All Slivko’s joking and comraderie with the guys was partly based on that: Hey, we’re here, we’re the only ones who care if we get out of this alive, let’s all try not to think about it together.

Conrad cared though.

That thought was like a bell in Slivko’s mind, and he was following it. It was different than everything else; it was different than what he’d experienced. His relationship with his family wasn't as good as he pretended it was around the guys (although he suspected they knew), and Packard was there to minimize damages to their unit, or at least that had been what he’d done in Vietnam, but he didn’t really care about them as individuals, more as an idea. His men. Even the other guys in the unit—Mills had been worried about him, but Cole had just died and the world hadn’t stopped spinning. And Slivko had seen what happened to Nieves. Up until this point, the only person who had seriously been invested in Slivko staying alive had been Slivko himself. 

But he remembered how Conrad had relaxed slightly when Slivko agreed to get out of sight when Packard came. He remembered how Conrad had phrased it: “I need you to do me a favor.” 

Had it really been for Conrad himself?

Conrad had run through poison gas and a swarm of seriously lethal bird-things to help him. He’d stood by Slivko when the skull-crawler thing came at them. He’d trusted Slivko to fix the boat, singled him out from the rest. He’d kept Packard’s attention on him when Packard had nearly pulled a gun on Slivko all the way back at the flaming lake. 

And Slivko didn’t know why.

The guys in Slivko’s unit liked him, because he went out of his way to make them laugh, to help them loosen up from all the stress. But this thing with Conrad was something different, and it felt more like respect or trust, and there was something else there that Slivko had decided he wasn’t going to think about until he was sure they were both safe. 

But what he knew, one of the only things he knew for sure, was that Conrad was probably the first person to go out of his way like that to keep Slivko safe. He’d done it over and over again. Conrad cared. 

A sound from Conrad made Slivko freeze. He’d been working his way forward, still trying to figure out what he was going to do, but when he peered out from the undergrowth, it became immediately clear that he’d run out of time to think about it. In the clearing above the cliff, Conrad was on his feet, although barely. His back was still against the tree, but someone (one of the soldiers, Slivko couldn’t see who) had removed the gag and pulled him upright, supporting him mostly by his arms, which were still tied at the wrists. They helped him tip a canteen briefly to his lips, and Slivko could see Conrad say something to the man, but couldn’t make out what it was. 

Now that Slivko was closer, he could see the rise and fall of Conrad’s chest as the soldier supported him away from the tree—he wasn’t breathing right. It was too ragged, Slivko could almost hear it. Something had happened that Slivko had missed, and it filled his mind with blinding anger when he realized that Packard must have hurt Conrad again, like he had at the boat, and Slivko hadn’t been able to stop him this time either.

The soldier took Conrad to the edge of the cliff and started to work with a rope on Conrad’s already-bound wrists. Slivko felt a rush of something that might have been fear when Conrad struggled, almost pulling away, and he almost started forward then, but he spotted Packard just as he was about to move, and it froze him for a second. The colonel was watching Conrad, a grim smile on his lips. Conrad was facing away from Slivko so Slivko couldn’t see his expression, but the soldier re-tying his wrists looked slightly nauseous. 

That was the closest thing to a go-sign Slivko was going to get.

“Hey!” He stepped through the undergrowth into the clearing. It didn’t go as smoothly as he’d hoped, and he had to twist away from some clinging branches before he was clear, but at least saying something had done what he’d wanted it to: no one was pointing a gun at him thinking he was an island animal, although everyone seemed pretty startled. He hesitated, but only for a second. “Let him go, sir.” 

Slivko didn’t have his gun up, but it was in his hands. The soldiers were looking uncertainly between him and Packard, but none of them had reached for their weapons yet, which Slivko was willing to take as a good sign. He shifted the gun slightly in his hands, re-adjusting the grip, but he kept it pointed down. 

Packard was looking at him like he wanted to kill him, but now that he was looking, Slivko didn’t want to turn away from Packard.

“You shouldn’t have come back here, Slivko.” 

It was strange for Slivko, hearing Packard’s voice and thinking of him as an enemy. He’d taken orders from that voice. He’d trusted Packard. He only had to glance at Conrad swaying on his feet to remember why he didn’t trust him anymore though.

“I know, sir.” Slivko was shocked that he sounded so normal when he spoke. “You can’t do this.” He still didn’t want to look away from Packard, but for the barest fraction of a second his eyes flicked to Conrad again, this time focusing on his face. 

It took Slivko several seconds, after he looked back at Packard, to process Conrad’s desperate expression and realize that the man was afraid for him.

“Mills is alive.” Slivko didn’t know why he was saying this, exactly. He almost stammered on the words—he’d wanted to explain that Packard was wrong, to try to convince the men. “I’m alive: Weaver and San and Brooks, and there’s this other guy that we found who’s been here since World War II, and we’re all still alive.” He watched Packard’s face. “Conrad got us across the whole island. He’s spent all this time trying to get as many people off the island as he can. We met up with Colonel Packard and the men he had with him—Mills and Cole, you know, a bunch of the rest of the guys, and Packard said he still had a guy out there, so Conrad agreed to go looking for Chapman, even though it took us way out of our way. He wanted to make sure everyone survived.” The words dried up in his throat at the look Packard was giving him. He hoped the other men understood what he meant, that maybe this wasn’t just about saving Kong, and who could be worried about something that big anyway? This was about saving Conrad.

“Slivko, Weaver’s dead, man.” That was the soldier who had given Conrad a canteen. Slivko wished he could remember his name, but they’d never been close, and Slivko had other things on his mind. 

“She’s not. Conrad sent her and the rest up to the north side of the island to catch the choppers out. I was in the boat when you came for Conrad-- he and I were trying to fix the boat so you guys could come with us and get off the island safe too.” He took a deep breath, watching Packard. The man was holding his gun, but it wasn’t up, and he contemplated Slivko. 

It occurred to Slivko that Packard was giving him a look like he was a pet dog that had suddenly turned vicious.

“You make him sound like a saint.” Slivko tensed even further at the light tone in Packard’s voice. The man’s smile was forced. “Shame I don’t care.” Packard turned to his men. “Once we do this, we can get off this island. Kong needs to die, and we can kill him, right now.”

Slivko half-expected the men to jump into motion at the no-nonsense sort of instruction they’d all heard thousands of times in Vietnam, but they didn’t. Packard turned and stared at them, his temper surfacing behind his eyes.

“The explosives are already primed.” He snapped the words. “There is almost nothing left to do. Do you want to leave this island better than we found it? When that thing killed all our men?”

The man who’d given Conrad the canteen looked slowly between the rest of the soldiers. 

“I think we’re done here, sir.” 

Packard’s expression went flat and murderous. His gun came up, and for a second Slivko thought the man was going to shoot him, but instead he turned. He looked at Conrad, who had been watching unobtrusively from the edge of the cliff. Maybe Conrad had known what would happen, or maybe it was just taking all his concentration to stay upright.

“I’m not done.”

Slivko realized what he was about to do only a fraction of a second before Packard’s gun went off. The bullet must have struck Conrad in the leg, because the man fell, pitching to the side, and didn’t even shout as he went over the edge of the cliff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I'm sorry. I feel like I should apologize for ending this chapter on a literal cliffhanger but I assure you I do have reasons for it. And I promise not to make you wait so long for the next chapter-- this one fought me, hard, which is part of why it took so long. Trust me, you'll be glad (even if you aren't now) that you ended up with this version rather than my first draft. Next chapter coming soon!


	5. Bloodloss (Conrad)

Conrad wasn’t exactly sure where he was when he woke up.

He became aware of things in stages: first, that he was in pain. Next came sounds. He could hear insects shrilling somewhere nearby, and in the distance a bird, but that was all.

Slowly the details began to fill themselves in.

He’d…fallen?

Packard had shot him, again. That much he did remember.

With a great deal of effort he tried to push himself up enough to look around, only to discover that his hands were still tied. But he was lying on his back on firm ground, not dangling off a cliff by his wrists. Nor was he a splatter on the rocks at the bottom of the mountain. What had _happened_?

He rolled over, regretting the motion even as he made it, but it allowed him to lift his head more and look around.

He didn’t even see the mountain.

“What the hell…”

He let his head rest on the ground again, closing his eyes and trying to concentrate. What did he remember?

Falling, he did remember that. He remembered the expression on Slivko’s face—he’d been looking at the young man when he’d slipped over the edge. That opened a whole new realm of worry; Slivko had been there, where Packard was—was he ok?

He took a deep breath, trying to focus.

Falling.

His wrists had hurt like… judging from the pain in them now, they’d probably been broken by the fall. He’d been brought up short by his bonds, already attached to the long rope they’d planned to use to make him bait for Kong. He couldn’t remember what had happened next, presumably he’d blacked out. He might have heard Slivko shouting…

He remembered hot wind. Not silence, not really, but the woods had gone silent then. There had been a sound, and Conrad had opened his eyes to see Kong. He couldn’t have been more than four feet away from him, examining Conrad where he hung totally helpless by his wrists.

Kong had reached for him then, and Conrad had struggled hard against his natural instinct to scream. He’d succeeded, but only barely. Without any apparent effort, Kong had broken the rope holding Conrad up, and caught him when he fell. Had he been able to stand, it would have taken Conrad maybe fifteen steps to walk across that palm. As it was, he lay there, dazed, and Kong had looked at him.

It had only been then that Conrad remembered the bombs, the seismic charges they were planning to drop on Kong’s head. He would have tried to warn Kong, but by the time he got enough breath in his chest to speak, Kong was walking, away from the mountain. Conrad had tried to tell him to stop, and to put him down so he could get back to Slivko, but for all Kong’s wisdom, he didn’t speak English.

They had still been walking when Conrad’s eyes had closed against his will and his consciousness had slipped from him.

…So where was he now?

Opening his eyes once more didn’t really help Conrad get his bearings. When they’d crashed on the island initially, the very first thing he had done was to figure out where they were and where they were trying to get to. Here, he was in a forest. He couldn’t even see the sun, but from the quality of the light, he’d already missed the exit window. If Slivko was smart, and Conrad knew he was, he would have given up Conrad as a lost cause and headed back to the boat with Packard’s soldiers in tow, in hopes of getting there in time. That is, if Packard hadn’t shot him too. And if the young man’s big heart hadn’t gotten in the way of his smarts telling him to leave Conrad behind.

Conrad didn’t bother adding up his odds of surviving this. He knew he wasn’t going to like whatever odds he came up with, and anyway he had more critical things to do than convince himself he was going to die here.

His heart stuttered on that thought. It had certainly occurred to him many times before, but maybe never as concretely as this. He was going to die here. He didn’t want to die here, but he was going to anyway.

“Pull yourself together.”

He said the words out loud to jar himself out of thinking like that. He wasn’t going to die here if he could help it.

The first order of business was getting the ropes off his wrists. That took some doing. If it was really as easy to get out of being tied up as all the movies said it was, then people wouldn’t have been using it as a way to keep people as captives for thousands of years. Conrad knew some tricks, but two broken wrists made them harder to implement. The bases of his hands were already swollen, purple and red bruising from the broken bones rising to the edges of his skin. He managed to get the ropes off, but it cost him nearly fifteen exhausted minutes, and he briefly lost consciousness again at least once.

There wasn’t much time to sit around congratulating himself on his success, his hands were only going to get harder to use. Fabric torn from his ruined shirt were paired with a stick to make a tourniquet for his leg above where Packard had shot him. If he lost the leg from it, well, at least he wouldn’t bleed out.

Next, his side. The older gunshot wound had not stopped bleeding, and somewhere remotely Conrad wondered exactly how much more blood he could afford to lose before he passed out and didn’t wake up again. He pushed the thought aside. He was pushing a lot of thoughts aside, preferring to stay busy than to dwell on any one thought in particular. He’d seen shit hit the fan enough times to know that thinking too much led to panic, and panicking when this much had gone wrong could only lead to death. So instead of worrying about how he was going to get all the way back to the village Marlow had come from, he just started crawling.

Going was slow. Conrad’s first destination was a stream, which he could hear through the trees. He knew he was badly dehydrated by this point, but he couldn’t afford to wait by the stream and rehydrate little by little; his strength was failing too fast. Instead he drank as much as he could stand, found the sun through the gap in the trees created by the stream, and started moving south.

He wasn’t going to make it all the way. That much he knew. But the people of the village couldn’t stay within their walls all the time. After all, when Marlow had found their group, he’d been with a group of his own. Conrad just had to get close enough to be noticed. He’d bet that there wasn’t much that happened on the island that escaped the notice of the local tribesmen. The trick would be getting close enough that they’d bother to bring him back with them. All of this without getting eaten by one of the island’s creatures.

He saw no sign of Kong. He didn’t hear him either, but that was to be expected. Kong had practically snuck up on him and Weaver when they’d been atop the mountain looking for a way back to the boat. How a creature that large moved so quietly Conrad had no idea, but he had bigger worries right now.

Front and center in his mind was Slivko.

Conrad kept trying to put him out of his head, but he couldn’t. Slivko had followed them up the mountain, confronted Packard—which was in itself, insane—and turned the rest of the soldiers following Packard from the path that would get them all killed. Conrad was impressed, but more strongly than that, he was proud. Slivko gave the sense of somebody who was consistently underestimated, but in reality, he was worth twenty of most men Conrad had met. Conrad would argue that list included Conrad himself. He’d been useful on this mission because that’s what he’d been paid to do. Of course it was his priority to keep people alive, but for what? To prove a point? Because it was what he was good at? Slivko was doing it because he couldn’t stand to let people die when he could save them. He’d proved that when he’d initially turned against Packard, and again just now on the mountain.

Above everything else, Conrad hoped Slivko had gone against his instincts and gotten the hell off the island instead of coming after him. Conrad was supposed to be the guide, not the one in need of saving, and more than that—Weaver was already headed towards the rendezvous point. No doubt she was already on a helicopter. That left Conrad with only one person on the island he desperately wanted to get off alive, and that was Slivko. If Slivko got killed because of Conrad…

Dimly, Conrad realized there were tears coming out of his eyes. That, he had not expected, but blood loss makes people behave strangely. He’d seen people do stranger. He also found himself praying, for maybe the first time in ten years, as his crawl grew slower and slower.

His strength was fading too fast. He wasn’t going to make it.

He just hoped Slivko did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all wonderful sports for being patient with me. I apologize for the unexpected hiatus-- we're back in business now!
> 
> I also apologize for the short chapter: Conrad isn't really up to full chapter lengths at the moment, but the next one will be longer!


End file.
